New Read

I picked up a book my husband had checked out from the library just to see what it was. I simply cannot put it down. Sorry love, this one is MINE. You can read it while I'm at work, but in the evenings, hand it over.

The book is Ambler Warning by Robert Ludlum. It has a very intriguing premise.

From the inside cover: "On Parrish Island, a restricted island off the coast of Virgina, there is a litle-known and never-visited psychiatric facility. There, far from prying eyes, the government keeps in "deep storage" former intelligence employees whose psychiatric state makes them a security risk to their own government, people whose ramblings might jeopardize ongoing operations or prove dangerously inconvenient. One of these employees, former Consular Operations agent Hal Ambler, is one of the few who is so dangerous that he is in complete isolation form other patients, kept heavily medicated and closely watched. But there is one critical difference between Ambler and the other patients in the facility: Ambler isn't crazy.

With the help of a sympathetic nurse, Ambler manages to first clear his mind of the drug-induced haze and then executes a daring escape. On the loose and barely one step ahead of the retrieval teams sent after him, he is out to discover who had him stashed in the psychiatric hospital and why.

But the world he returns to isn't the one he so clearly remembers-friends and longtime associates don't recognize him, and there are no official records of any person named Hal Ambler. With no resources and his unknown enemies closing in on him, Ambler has to uncover the truth of who he was and figure out what it is about him-remember what he knows-tat makes him such a danger that someone is willing to risk everything to see him dead."

This book was published in 2005 - AFTER Ludlum's death.

Apparently Mr. Ludlum's publishing house has made a tasty industry of printing several of Ludlum's works since his death in 2001.

One does wonder a bit how many of these words were actually written by Robert Ludlum and how many came from the unnamed author and editor who "prepared it for publishing". But right now, I frankly don't care.

This book has all the intrigue and suspense of Ludlum's other work - the tale of Jason Bourne which was made famous by actor Matt Damon.

Yet this one is not just Bourne in a different setting. It it has it's own unique character development and plot twists. I'm only a little over 100 pages into it so far, but I'm savoring every paragraph.